Too many Metaplace related topics in one day you'll probably say.... but you can ignore those others.

Recently Metaplace released their first public look (other than a few stress tests) of their platform, in the form of MetaChat.
It was a chat room app (with avatars/pictures in a 2D space) originally released on MySpace, then Metaplace's forums and then Facebook. All of which connected to the same chat world.

They then put out a call for forum communities to test out placing the same type of app on their sites to test out it's features and integrating with other sites. I decided to go ahead and apply for the 'Community Testing', and lo and behold we were picked!

So we are now going to be one of the first forum communities outside of the official forums to test and play around with a Metaplace world. Yay, go us!

This app will pull in your forum logged in username and profile pic (although there is a problem with using the profile pics atm). Speaking of which, remember Metaplace is still alpha. Things might break, but things are changing rapidly.

If after playing around with it you have some simple ideas you think would add to the room, let me know and I'll have a go at trying to make them and add them in.

You'll notice the background is one of the screenshots uploaded to this site. One things I'm trying to work on is to have the background automatically cycle through the various screenshots on the site (of course trust my luck, the first time I ran it it looked for the one image missing from the list, and so crashed. A 1 in 150 random shot).

Well obviously it is primarily a chat room, so everything else is an added extra.

You can move around by clicking on the screen.

If you move up next to the footballs and then click on them, they will move off away from you, with the speed that they move depending on how close you were to the ball.
If you get the ball into the goal, your avatar will automatically scream "GOOOAALLL!!!" and the ball will return to the middle of the screen.

If you move up to the piano you can play it by clicking on the keys and everyone will be able to hear what you play.

On the top left corner, if you click on the arrow you bring down a menu of throwable emotes, such as snowballs, tomatoes etc.

On the top right corner there are emotes that will appear over your avatar when used (and a dice emote that will throw a 2d6)

Also on the top left, there is a film icon that lets you search for youtube videos and share them with everyone else in the room.

Every behaviour of the "world" is defined on the server and downloaded when the client loads up. All the assets (art/sounds) exist somewhere on the internet. For example, it is cycling through our screenshots for the background.
So the client can connect to whatever types of world there are available on the platform, be it chat rooms like this, or puzzle games, shooters, rpgs, or a big mmo. Anyone would be able to make a clients to render these worlds. The only official one atm just happens to be a flash client.

Obviously chat rooms like this are easier to make than games, so this is the first type of world being publicly shown.

_________________"Perhaps the sentiments contained in the following pages, are not yet sufficiently fashionable to procure them general favor; a long habit of not thinking a thing wrong, gives it a superficial appearance of being right, and raises at first a formidable outcry in defence of custom. But the tumult soon subsides." - Thomas Paine, Common Sense

Weird in the way that aside from being a chat client that seems stable enough, it's just sort of ... uh... i don't even know how to describe it. It just seems like a bunch of "other" stuff that somebody randomly plugged into a chat client. Interesting... but ... why? At some point I guess I need to come to grips with "Why ask why?" and just go with it.

_________________"Perhaps the sentiments contained in the following pages, are not yet sufficiently fashionable to procure them general favor; a long habit of not thinking a thing wrong, gives it a superficial appearance of being right, and raises at first a formidable outcry in defence of custom. But the tumult soon subsides." - Thomas Paine, Common Sense

Weird in the way that aside from being a chat client that seems stable enough, it's just sort of ... uh... i don't even know how to describe it. It just seems like a bunch of "other" stuff that somebody randomly plugged into a chat client. Interesting... but ... why? At some point I guess I need to come to grips with "Why ask why?" and just go with it.

The reason is because it's not simply a Chat Client. It is intended to be used for everything from Chat Rooms to MMORPG's. All the little added doodads are there because they can be.

Obo can probably explain Metaplace much better than I can, however the basic idea is that Metaplace is designed to be a platform for people to create whatever they want, and to be able to link their creations with other Metaplace's. and it's designed to be easy to use, without a need for extensive programming knowledge or skill.

So once it is complete you should be able to go to Metaplace, create an account at no cost, then either create your own game from scratch, or use components other people of created for form your game. You should only have to actually pay if you exceed a set bandwidth. But you will also be able to charge people to play your game, or use your world.

Weird in the way that aside from being a chat client that seems stable enough, it's just sort of ... uh... i don't even know how to describe it. It just seems like a bunch of "other" stuff that somebody randomly plugged into a chat client. Interesting... but ... why? At some point I guess I need to come to grips with "Why ask why?" and just go with it.

The reason is because it's not simply a Chat Client. It is intended to be used for everything from Chat Rooms to MMORPG's. All the little added doodads are there because they can be.

Obo can probably explain Metaplace much better than I can, however the basic idea is that Metaplace is designed to be a platform for people to create whatever they want, and to be able to link their creations with other Metaplace's. and it's designed to be easy to use, without a need for extensive programming knowledge or skill.

So once it is complete you should be able to go to Metaplace, create an account at no cost, then either create your own game from scratch, or use components other people of created for form your game. You should only have to actually pay if you exceed a set bandwidth. But you will also be able to charge people to play your game, or use your world.

Ahhhh.. ok, NOW it makes sense. It just needed a dash of capitalism and it all makes sense now.

_________________"Perhaps the sentiments contained in the following pages, are not yet sufficiently fashionable to procure them general favor; a long habit of not thinking a thing wrong, gives it a superficial appearance of being right, and raises at first a formidable outcry in defence of custom. But the tumult soon subsides." - Thomas Paine, Common Sense

Yeah, it needs at least 9.0.115.0 for flash. Sometimes even if you have it already installed it thinks it's not. That sometimes requires either emptying your cache or reinstalling flash from adobes site (maybe not the auto plugin install?). But then I'm not 100% sure as I've never had that problem.

They are wondering if there is any feedback so far. I know we're not that active at the moment and it hasn't been used much at all, especially for any sort of actual community chat, but some people have been in to have a look so I was wondering if there were any thoughts?

I feel like I'm staring at a peice of paper and being asked to comment on what kind of literature I prefer.

Just because I like a mystery doesn't mean if you write one on that sheet I'll like it.

I recall many years ago I had my first experience with a chat room that had 3D avatars. It was basically identical to every other chat room except that you could waste your time moving some selected 3D image around a 3D space. No sound, no avatar animation to speak of, not much of anything really. It wasn't until I saw Everquest that I really understood the potential to reflect a plausible construct to participate in.

So I suppose at this point the purpose of metaplace is a still a mystery to me.

The piano is really laggy and could do with being mapped to keyboard keys if it were to serve any sensible purpose. One octave is also very limiting. In general it just seems like a gimmick.

The footballs and throwy things are also rather gimmicky. Although, if you got enough people in there, I suppose you could get an interesting football game going.

I have not real issue with the chat interface itself.

I can see the possibilities of metaplace and, on reflection, with my interest in programming, I probably should have signed up for alpha. I've actually sort of gone the other way with my programming. I started of trying to make a working game in a web browser and have now gone on to try and make it using C++. If metaplace works out in the way in which it seems to be trying to, I my go back again.

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